ObamaCare: Past, Present, & Yet to Come

As Americans wait for the Supreme Court to determine whether all, part, or none of ObamaCare is unconstitutional, ObamaCare is being implemented and imposing costs.

As Americans wait for the Supreme Court to determine whether all, part, or none of ObamaCare is unconstitutional, ObamaCare is being implemented and imposing costs.

“When I sign this bill,” President Barack Obama said on March 23, 2010, “all of the overheated rhetoric over reform will finally confront the reality of reform.”

With that, Obama affixed his John Hancock to a bill that would surely have repulsed the most famous signer — and all the other signers — of the Declaration of Independence, for with it the U.S. government arrogated to itself vastly more power over the lives of its subjects than George III ever dreamed of exercising. That bill, of course, was the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), better known as ObamaCare.

Americans have since confronted the reality of Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement, and they don’t like what they see. Opinion polls have consistently revealed that the law commands the support of fewer than half of all Americans; and a January ABC News/Washington Post poll found that two-thirds believe the Supreme Court should overturn part or all of the law.

The people have very good reason to dislike ObamaCare. Between the PPACA and its companion Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act, nearly 1,000 pages (about 425,000 words) of tax hikes, mandates, and behavior-modification decrees were added to federal law. As of February, resultant regulations had expanded the Federal Register by 2.1 million words, making the whole of ObamaCare to date three times as long as the King James Version of the Bible, according to Americans for Limited Government.

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